


Geometry - A Triptych

by crimsonsenya



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-22 18:17:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10702467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonsenya/pseuds/crimsonsenya
Summary: It is a tangled web they weave.





	Geometry - A Triptych

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ in 2007. Canon divergent from s8, with certain incidents snatched and blended from s9. Doggett, Krycek and Scully POVs.

I. _Two Triangles Crossing_  
He must have missed the memo.

 

Yet again, there they were, shaded by a rough-barked oak tree, waiting for their informant to appear. The chilly mist slithered under John’s collar, dampening his clothes as well as his mood. Mulder, instead, didn’t seem the least bit bothered by their surroundings. He hasn’t said a word to John since they left their car on a deserted dirt road a couple of yards away, but his eyes were fixed intently on a line of trees that stood against the moonlight like a band of straight-backed giant soldiers. John shuffled his feet and rubbed his hands together. Finally, a shorter, dark silhouette detached from the other shadows and moved across the patch of grass towards them. The figure didn’t stop until it was only about a foot apart from Mulder. 

 

“Krycek,” Mulder sounded hoarse, but he didn’t cough to clear his voice. 

“Do you have any new information on the cult?” John asked, hoping to hurry them along, just once. 

“The group that was burned in South Dakota was one faction out of three. They still have hopes of locating another alien craft and him.” Krycek didn’t turn his head towards John as he replied. John didn’t really mind. Krycek had an unpredictable, predatory aura about him that John found disconcerting, and John had never been a man to cower. The indefinable, baleful glow seemed to condense in his liquid eyes that now gleamed in the twilight as enchanting and endearing as a cobra’s. Mulder’s gaze was locked with Alex’s. They might have been two boxers in a pre-fight staring contest, if it wasn’t for the complete lack of menacing body language. On the contrary, their stands were a mirror image of each other: both had their hands tugged in their pockets. Mulder was wearing his leather jacket, whereas Krycek was in a long, woolen overcoat. Their bodies were alert but not guarded, emanating a static energy that made John wish he had a whistle, so he could call a time-out on the ever-thickening, electric atmosphere.

 

“Give me what you got,” Mulder said, breaking the silence, and John drew in the breath he had been holding. Krycek pulled out a large envelope from under the lapels of his coat, his movements tranquil and coordinated. Mulder seized the data without verifying it, or even glancing down. Absentmindedly, John noticed Krycek didn’t wear a glove on his right hand, as John didn’t have much else to do in these encounters but to memorize details. Frankly, he would prefer staying home in bed to participating in bizarre nocturnal rituals which symbolism completely escaped him, but Dana insisted he accompany Mulder, no matter how many times John reported back to her that Krycek never behaved in any way that could be interpreted as threatening towards Mulder. ‘You are the only one I can trust’, she said. ‘With Mulder’s life’ was the part unsaid. It was a great honor and show of trust from her part, John knew, and John truly wished he was worthy of it. But he was unwillingly tied up in a secret that needed to be kept from her. 

 

“He is doing fine. He’s healthy and growing normally. I included his latest medical records in the file,” Krycek said, nodding at the envelope, and looking as if he was talking straight to Mulder’s mouth. He spun gracefully around in an attempt to leave, but Mulder, who hadn’t budged from his spot for the whole time, suddenly burst into action, crossing the distance to grasp Krycek's hand.

“Alex, bring me a picture of him next time.” It was an order, not a plea or a question, but the tone was that of a soft, child-like confidence. John thought he was imagining, when he saw Mulder’s fingers entwining with Krycek’s, but he blinked, and the two of them were still touching. Krycek gazed down and then slowly up at Mulder. They were now standing even closer than when Krycek arrived. There was a distance of just a few inches between their noses, and for a moment, John was certain Mulder would lean over, as his whole body reminded John of an agile willow bending over a river. When Krycek turned to leave again, it looked as if his cheek brushed against Mulder’s chin before he melted back into the shadows. They drove back to the city in silence. All the tension and the jitters that had seemed to plague Mulder on their way to the rendez-vous had now completely dissolved. He was focused on the road, driving fast but carefully, humming quietly in tune with the oldies radio station. 

 

The next morning at work, John took coffee to her, no sugar and skimmed milk, the way she liked to drink it. Dana smiled at him and at the offered mug, and he felt like he was the luckiest man in the world just to sit down next to her in a cluttered basement office. That day, instead of relating the events of the previous night, he asked her about Krycek. She told John about his ties to the consortium and his treachery, about her profound distrust of him and both Mulder’s deeply ingrained hate for him and the history they shared. How horrified would she be if she found out about John double-crossing –or would it be triple, as there were three people involved– her? He desperately wanted tell her about Mulder keeping tabs on William, how her son grew up playing like regular children, and he wanted to plead for forgiveness. Dana must have ached to share her sorrow about loosing her child, but she couldn’t as long as the pain still squeezed her heart with a too tight a grip. She had to know that he understood, and that he was waiting on the wings to be there for her the same way she had been for him, when he had had to face the death of his son all over again. As Dana briefed him on their latest case, John got an overwhelming urge to take her hand and kiss her knuckles. Still so optimistic and indomitable, after everything that had happened. John prayed she would never have to know how Mulder once again had acted behind her back.

 

There had always been something mysterious about Mulder and Dana that he hadn’t quite been able to pinpoint before, as if he had been missing the keystone at the crown of an arch that held the whole construct of their relationship together. It had to do with the unnecessary complexity of their interaction, and with all those years spent without taking the next step beyond their professional partnership. Some hesitation that seemed to lack completely between him and Dana, once they had gone past the initial wariness. The realization dawned to him though, as he read through the file Mulder had on Krycek. The folder contained information from before The X-files was burnt down, so Mulder must have written it entirely anew afterwards. John put together the pieces of the puzzle like a good detective should. The new revelations that surged out from Mulder’s passionate reports merged with John’s own memories of Mulder’s inexplicable actions, Krycek’s involvement of bringing Mulder back from the dead, and how Krycek had aided them to keep Dana safe before William was born. 

 

The situation would have been ridiculous and pathetic already, even if they weren’t fighting against government conspiracies. When Mulder came back, it had been a sad triangle between John, Dana and Mulder. And John had stepped back before he got his heart ground to dust, instead of just shattered to pieces, but it appeared there had been another way more tragic triangle going on all along. Inevitably, the two triangles had crossed and interloped, turning them into a new geometrical shape that resembled more of a plot map of a daytime drama: John was in love with Dana, who loved Mulder but needed John fiercely. Mulder loved Dana, but was madly obsessed with Alex. Alex’s fate was to love Mulder, but it was impossible love. 

 

They were in an impasse, dead end, check mate, caught in a trap, whatever. They should all walk out, but John wouldn’t be the first one, and he suspected that nobody really wanted to. He closed the file wondering if Dana would go out on a dinner with him, if he asked her right away.

 

II. _Circled Around Your Heart_  
Love, love, love.

 

“I want you to find out where they took my son,” Mulder said to me, and I finally knew this was it. 

Not exactly a pledge of eternal love Shakespeare would have approved of, but then again, we were two bleeding Romeos caught in a tragedy so fucked up the poor poet couldn't even dream of writing. The gold and maroon of the oak leaves rivaled that of the sunset. The air was crisp and saturated with hope. He reached out for my hand and tugged it under his coat. My chilly fingers bundled his shirt, grateful for the warmth, even more so when his hand covered my own. We had come full circle. 

 

“Let me be what you can’t be,” had been my vow of devotion, when he was back home and lucid enough after his coma. “We don’t have much time left before the end, but there are still ways to fight them. You can’t do it alone. As much as you might hate it, you will need me to be there to pull the trigger, when your conscience freezes you. You will need me to be ruthless, when you’d be compassionate. They tossed you out when you weren’t useful anymore. Now that you’re back, they will hunt you down like an animal. Let me teach you, how to run and hide.” Let me keep you alive.

“Why? Why, A-Alex?” You are the reason I am alive. He leaned on the wall, hair tousled and eyes wild, the tiny scars discernible even in the half-light. It broke my heart to see him like that, his innocence stripped, and his sense of wonder shattered. No words existed that could have put him back together, so I dropped down, unzipped his jeans and took him in my mouth. After he came, and I swallowed, his knees gave under, and he slid down on my lap in a tight ball. _You know you will belong to me now, don’t you? What else do I have left?_

 

Scully’s disgust and horror crashed out of her in waves so strong I could taste them like bile on the back of my throat, when Reyes and I drove her down to Georgia. Alexander Krycek –one-armed hitman, survivalist, all-around schemer, Spooky fanboy, and midwife. I don’t know which one she resented more: me actually being there with her at the single most important moment of her life, or the fact that Mulder had wanted me there. Always been such an easy target for taking out frustration, and if she hadn’t had her new partner caring for her, I think she would have shot me point blank one of those times I brought her a message from Mulder, when he was hiding. But she had nothing to worry, not even after she gave their son for adoption. Mulder would be back to her, because he never stopped loving anyone. Even if you tore his heart out and fed the shreds back to him drenched in vinegar, he would always want you, if he had ever carried the tiniest smidgen of love for you. 

 

No, I didn’t feel sorry for her, no matter what monsters she was facing with her baby. She had had Mulder for so long, it was my turn now. He was in New Mexico with Gibson Praise for a couple of months, while I moved across the country like some absurd, modern-day Hermes, messenger of the gods. We both could feel it, the thrill and menace of the impending doom, yet I don’t think I had ever felt so centered or serene in my life, as if swinging low on a calm sea. He looked illicitly fragile, as I studied his supple shadow-shaped form, asleep on the bed, but I knew it was just an illusion. They would never beat him –never–, not as long as there was one breath left in my body, and I doubted even death could keep me away from him, or him from fighting against them. Sometimes, I couldn’t bear waking him and gazing at those eyes that always found me like two magnetic searchlights, but I always touched him, feather light yet burning. One night, I fastened a collar around his neck. 

 

Mulder wanted us to meet in a forest outside the city, under a lonely, rugged oak. Only a couple of times, he has arrived alone. I amused myself with the thought of telling Doggett the reason we came here, instead of some abandoned warehouse at the docks, and how Doggett’s jaw would dislodge, if he saw the strip of soft leather under Mulder’s turtleneck. I always leave our encounters grinning like a fool, but when we meet, I barely remember he is tagging along with Mulder. The man must suspect something though. You don’t spend years as an agent half-blind or without an alert sixth sense. 

 

Every time I see Mulder standing there, wearing a leather jacket and jeans, all bent-up energy gingerly reined under an impenetrable exterior, it is like a revelation. We have balanced like yang and yin, and just like the two forces we have blended. I hand out the file with William’s medical records to Mulder and turn to leave, but he doesn’t let me go. This is what a lightning rod feels, struck by high-voltage Mulder. For a moment, he is completely open, and his emotions floating towards me are excruciatingly beautiful. I can almost picture them as hungry tendrils seeking out to embrace me. He shivers slightly, and I want to pull him closer than my skin.

Oh yeah, special agent John Doggett, kiss us and tell Scully. Mulder is mine too.

 

III. _Out Of Square_  
Secrets.

 

All it had taken was a second’s hesitation to fire her gun, when she and John had rushed in the hospital room, and Krycek still inhabited the same planet as she did. Later, she remembered the whole scene as a nightmarish still life, blurred wraith-like on the edges; the empty syringe and vial on Krycek’s hand, the white covers of Mulder’s bed, the removed oxygen mask, and Krycek’s dark gaze darting at her, so deep and accusatory that for one crucial second before Mulder convulsed she had wavered.

 

During Mulder’s abduction, she had prayed for his return countless times, hoping –no, believing– that if only he came back, everything would be as it used to be, before the unnamed worry for her baby and her inescapable feelings for John. Both she and Mulder busy and preoccupied with whacked out case files and conclusions she could refuse to accept. They would still be just partners, who had slept together only next door to each other, and she would know with the certainty of being his constant that after work, Mulder would go home to his fish, his sofa, and the x on his window. Yet, her life had irreversibly spun to chaos, to a world of spirals, curves and open angles instead of the beautiful logic of fixed geometrical shapes.

 

She wished she had never found it, that damned tape. Only if her mind could be swiped clean as casually as a chalkboard. Even if her not seeing it hadn’t prevented anything that happened later, it might have made it easier for her to bear. The tag “A & I” on a battered VHS had caught her eye as she fumbled through Mulder’s drawers one lonely, sleepless night in his apartment after his disappearance. The movie was shot with a hand camera; the colors were pale, and the shadows bleary. The frames moved forward s slow, as if the tape had been dipped in molasses, that she was afraid the film would get stuck in the jaws of the VCR.

 

What got stuck was her, absolutely glued to the screen as images of a young, fresh Alex Krycek stripping on Mulder’s bed flashed in front of her, and Mulder’s voice, sultry in a way she could have never imagined, dripped dirty words of unrestrained desire that slid around her body and down between her legs. She watched as Krycek shyly gripped Mulder’s hair while Mulder’s lips wrapped around his cock. She kept watching when Mulder fucked him face to face like a lover, and she couldn’t tear her eyes off when Mulder came with a shudder, devouring Krycek’s lips and throat with manic kisses. The picture was cut off, and she peered at the black and white grains, inhaling long gasps of air that was suddenly filled with dust and loneliness.

 

But the film rolled still. The camera panned first the walls, then the mirror in the ceiling, and she was sucked again into a dark ceremony not reserved for her. This wasn’t the same occasion. It was night. No light streamed in through the window, and the body in bed with Mulder was mutilated. There was nothing timid or dewy in the man that moved swiftly over Mulder. He was sleek and adamant. Mulder’s expression was a rapture of anger and pleasure. His eyes were closed as if in pain, but he braced his knees wider, his hand reaching back to clutch Krycek’s hip, as his body danced in a perfect counterpoint to Krycek’s thrusts. Mulder was completely silent, but if she listened intently, she could hear a thick flow of Russian like a spellbinding incantation.

 

It had been exactly that image of ecstasy, that had held her back. No matter how much she regretted afterwards, she didn’t shoot Krycek then. Now, she never would. When she walked in on them, they were kissing at plain sight on the hallway. The door to Mulder’s apartment was ajar, and Krycek was wearing his coat as if he had just arrived or was about to leave. Though she wasn’t the least bit surprised, she nevertheless reprimanded Mulder as she assumed he would expect her to. Oddly disassociated, she studied her own full-blown indignation, and with an even greater sense of surrealism, Mulder’s reaction to her choleric string of accusations and reminders of the reasons why Mulder should not be involved with Krycek.

Mulder had kissed her after William was born, and as soon as she could, she had prodded him into sleeping with her. It had only stagnated their relationship, instead of moving it forward. There had been no bright revelation, just a dull sentiment of solidifying a friendship, with no talk of any special commitment further than what had already existed. She had watched them kissing for quite a while, the way Mulder’s thumbs stroked Krycek’s cheekbones, and how Krycek had Mulder pinned against the wall by his thigh between Mulder’s legs.

 

Only two weeks had gone by since the night she and Mulder spent together, and she had let out to Mulder the frustration she knew should be there, even if she didn’t feel it. Mulder listened to her, pacing around, fists clenched, his lips in a tight line, and his eyes giving off sparks. The image of him circling the basement office with the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, pondering stubbornly on some exceptional theory, crossed her mind. His reply got her startled in its abruptness, and it took her a moment, before she caught on his words.

“…Our son was conceived by Immaculate Conception, and in twenty years, the only thing left of the humanity may be brainwashed drones and hybrid clones...” Mulder loomed in front of her. His temper and desperation seemed to escalate by each inhalation. “On the catastrophe scale, I don’t think my tongue in Alex Krycek’s throat even registers.” _If you only ever had just your tongue down his throat…_ She must have looked like she was feeling sick, because Mulder deflated at once. “I’m so sorry. I know you’ve been through so much. Scully, I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He saved me,” Mulder said, miserably. Score 1-0 for Dana Scully, she got Mulder swallowing in guilt. She looked at the coffee table, at the couch, at the fish tank, anywhere but Mulder.

 

The night William was born, Krycek sat beside her on a moth-eaten mattress. Later, she admitted to herself she had been unfair to him, treating him as if he had forced her to give birth to her child like some ragtag pioneer on the road, whereas she knew perfectly Krycek was there only because he would never refuse Mulder’s request to help her. By now, she had understood at least something about the two of them. There was only one thing Krycek was after in regard with Mulder, his trust. And aid her Krycek did. In fact, she discovered a whole new definition to the expression cool as cucumber, when her nails dug four crescents in Krycek’s palm as she thrashed about cursing during the contractions.

“What the fuck do _you_ know about childbirth?” she spat at him, when the periods between pain were still long enough for relief.

“I’ve seen a horse do it.” She barked a choked laugh at him. “And I like Discovery Channel.” There was a slight twist in the corner of his mouth. For the first time, she really studied his face, an ethereal ellipse that reflected both lethal hardness and refined sensuality. He was contemplating the oil lamp nearby, as if it were a work of particularly eloquent art. Even between contractions, he kept grasping her hand. Strangely introspective, skin smoothed by the soft light, he possessed the beauty of a still Buddha statue. This man was the shadow Mulder loved and was twined with. She wanted to hate him. If she could pierce him full of needle holes, maybe she would be able to drain out what it was in him that held Mulder captive.

“I know how you feel about him, how you have always felt. I know what you want.” Her tone was snide, sprinkled with involuntary jealousy. She saw him freeze for a fracture of a second, seemingly shocked, but he instantly slipped on his usual, detached, impersonal mask.

“You know nothing,” he dismissed her. “Now breathe.”

 

She could tell when Mulder came to her straight from Krycek’s company. The heady scent of him clung to Mulder’s skin demanding attention, upsetting her sleep. Those nights, Mulder never touched her. He slept on the other side of the bed, his back turned to her. The mornings after, she rubbed herself on Mulder. Krycek and she, they were exchanging marks. Even if Mulder had no clue, she knew Krycek wouldn’t miss the message. Smirking and shivering, she could picture his green eyes hunting them from the darkness, and she believed Mulder could feel him too.

 

But the nights after, she let John hold her, explore her mouth, and caress her heart. She allowed him to suspect she carried secrets she would some day share. It was too easy to surrender to the seduction of being cherished and revered completely, exclusively. The pure delight and exquisite gratification tied her to John probably stronger than she should have let it. He was becoming her solid tether, and sometimes, honesty beckoned her to be square with Mulder about John. But Mulder had a bond of his own –a strand of leather worshiping his throat with a lover’s obsession. Again, that was a little something she wasn’t supposed to notice. Maybe, with the chaos awaiting them right outside, it wasn’t so essential to figure out the shapes of their relationships, or to comprehend the formations of desire and dependency that were never steadfast, but constantly fluctuating. Maybe, it would be enough to know that somewhere in the geometry of destiny, there was a sphere reserved just for them.


End file.
